Monday, September 26, 2016

GALLERY: Tomb Scorpion


From beneath the sands it comes, scuttling forward to surprise its prey, the Tomb Scorpion is finally here! I snatched this guy up when the Tomb Kings were put on Last Chance to Buy and he's been sitting assembled ever since then. With the a local tournament approaching I figured it was the perfect excuse to get him painted.


Part of why I decided to tackle this model before the tournament was because it seemed like it would be fairly quick and simple. Most of the model is the carapace, so once that was done it would go fairly quickly. I debated about painting this as marble like my other constructs, or as bone like the old official GW one was painted. In the end I decided to go for the look of an actual dead scorpion. The idea is that the priests found this giant dead scorpion (or killed it themselves) in the desert, bolted some stuff to it and hollowed out a spot for one of their comrades to be interned in its back. With that in mind I primed the model black, then gave it all a quick layer of Abaddon Black so that it would be the correct shade if I needed to touch it up later. The primer and the paint are slightly different shades of black. This was then all dry brushed with Eshin Grey, followed by Dawnstone Grey. After that was done I glazed the whole thing with Nuln Oil to soften the dry brushing and darken it back down.


Now came the meticulous part. Chunk by chunk I went back with Dawnstone Grey and edge highlighted everything. This was followed by a thinner and sparser highlight of Karak Stone, and finally Karak Stone mixed with a bit of white. I did this in smaller chunks, so first I did the main body, then one pincer, then the other, then one side of the legs, and so on. I broke it up this way so I didn't get bored of just painting one color over such a large surface area. I also went back with Abaddon Black and Nuln Oil to darken down certain areas and tidy up the highlighting and dry brushing where needed.


Once the carapace was done that was about 90% of the model! I was going to do the gold next, but since there is some gold on top of the mummy I decided to do him next. The bone and the bandages were painted at the same time. The bone is Screaming Skull, the bandages are Charadon Granite. The bone was shaded with Agrax Earthshade and the bandages with Nuln Oil. I highlighted these up in the same way as I have done with all of my other Tomb Kings stuff. I painted the piece of parchment on the mummy's chest turquoise to help tie it into my army's colors more. All of the gold was first base coated with Retributor Armor to give the gold a solid color to work off of. This was then given a solid layer of Gehenna's Gold, my main gold color for this army. I shaded it with Agrax, relayered the Gold, and highlighted by mixing in Stormhost Silver. The weathering is done with a mix of Caliban Green and Sotek Green since I wanted it to look different from all of the other turquoise on my army. I also started this army before the oxide color came out, otherwise I would have used that.


All of my constructs have glowing green eyes, which you can find a tutorial for here. I think it helps add a lot of menace to this mini. Once I was done I decided that the mummy blended into the scorpion's carapace too much, so I added a magical glow coming from underneath the mummy. I really like what this added and definitely helps imply that the mummified Liche Priest is the one animating this thing. With that and some basing it was done! The Tomb Scorpion was never my favorite model, and before the Tomb Kings got pulled from production I don't know if I even would have ever gotten one. I'm really happy I did though. I think these older models just need a little more attention while painting to really make them shine.

Be sure to watch the video below for a 360 degree video of the model. The music is once again provided by Adam Harvey, you can follow him on his Facebook page and listen to some more of his music on his Youtube channel.


Until next time,

Tyler M.

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